My guess would be that Dwyer asked for his release from the Cubs. I mean he batted .332 at AAA, but the team didn’t even give him a September call-up.

I agree with Josh that the mere existance of this card is amazing. What Topps employee said, “Here’s a guy who played 13 games in the Bigs last year – lets put him in the set! What do you mean who do we take out? Put that Dale Murphy kid back onto our quad-rookie cards again, I don’t think he’s going to pan out anyway.”

It’s actually good for me because I missed a lot of the ’76 & ’84 seasons because I went to France both of those years.

Another ’76 season trade that was pretty dumb was the Staub/Lolich trade. That was a Dec. ’75 trade but it impacted the ’76 season. I remember being really pissed about that one.

Great recollection on the players trading numbers in that deal.

I remember sitting in our living room and my sister noticed that Manguel was wearing #11, and for about 10 minutes we were wondering why Garrett would give up his number to the new guy. Then one of the announcers said Garrett and Unser were traded, my sister flipped out and walked out of the room and that was literally the last Met game she watched for about 10 years.

This seemed like the time period where the Mets were just making trades for the sake of making trades.

Garrett is kind of a underrated and pivotal player in Mets history. He was a good glove man and used to get a lot of base on balls, I think he finished in the top 10 3 times, so he was at least a average/slightly above average third basemen. It seems like they totally mismanaged his career.

They spent years trying to find a third-basemen when they had a more than an adequate player in Garrett if they’d just give him the job. But the really bad part was that they traded Amos Otis and Nolan Ryan trying to look for Garrett’s replacement. Then when Foy, Fregosi were a bust, they went back to Garrett and he was a big part of the ’73 Pennant team.

Very bad week to be a 10-year Mets fan: Dave Kingman had broken his thumb making an awkward catch a few days before, which interrupted what could have been an historic HR spree. He missed 2 months — I think the injury inspired the Dwyer trade — but still finished 2nd NL in HRs that year.

Good catch on the ’77 season. He’s just list as playing 13 games for the ’77 Cards, I forgot he was still Cubs Property until September 1977 and played in the Minors for the Cubs. That would explain the Airbrush job.

So he’s either wearing a Cubs ’77 minor league outfit or Mets ’76 outfit in the Photo or maybe it was taken during spring training 1977 with the Cubs.

What’s odd in retrospect is why the Cubs released him at the end of ’77?? He hit .332/.459/.582 in triple A, the Cubs were pretty terrible in the late 70′s, there’s no reason to just release him. Something must have happened that was never let out.

Dwyer was the prototypical Quadruple A player, Too Good to stay in the Minors not good enough to get a steady job in the Majors.

just beautiful. the orioles were my american league team, and i always had a fondness for jim dwyer because, as you captured perfectly, he was the kind of guy who would come over and help you move a couch.

the name has stuck with me because one of my favorite newspaper writers back in the 1980s was yet another jim dwyer, the subway columnist for new york newsday.

Though Dwyer logged a few games with the Cards at the end of ’77, he was actually property of the Cubs for most of ’77. He had an outstanding year at triple A, and then the Cubs just cut him loose. (The Cubs already had a couple lefty bats on their bench–Greg Gross and Larry Biittner–so they saw no need to call up Dwyer, I guess, or even keep him around in any capacity.)

That was just another in a series of pointless trades the Mets were making in the 70′s. Seriously, I never realized that Jim Dwyer had an 18 year career, I never realized that the Dwyer for the Orioles and the Dwyer on the Mets was the same guy.

This card is bizarre when you think about it because he was on the Cardinals the entire 1977 season so it’s odd that they would have to airbrush his ’78 card. The problem was that he only played 13 games for the Cardinals in 1977 so I guess no one had a photo of him in a Cardinals Uniform. That’s probably a photo of him in a Mets uniform from 1976.

He had 3 decent years as a part-time player, 1982(Ops+ 147), 1983(Ops+145)-.375 in the World Series, and 1987 (Ops+135). But really there’s no way a guy with his skill set should ever have an 18 year career.

He didn’t go above (1) War until his 13th season in the majors. He was essentially at or below replacement level the first 12 years of his big league career. He’s lucky that he played during the time he did because if he played today he probably would have never spent more that 4 or 5 seasons in the majors.